Hollow Men: Subordinate Masculinities in Contemporary American Drama
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HOLLOW MEN: SUBORDINATE MASCULINITIES IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN DRAMA by Grant Williams Bachelor’s, Indiana University, 2004 Master’s, University of Pittsburgh, 2008 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2013 i UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS & SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Grant Williams It was defended on February, 15, 2013 and approved by Paul Eiss, Associate Professor, Department of History, Carnegie Mellon University Attilio Favorini, Professor, Department of Theatre Arts, University of Pittsburgh Bruce McConachie, Professor, Department of Theatre Arts, University of Pittsburgh Dissertation Advisor: Kathleen George, Professor, Department of Theatre Arts, University of Pittsburgh ii Copyright © by Grant Williams 2013 iii HOLLOW MEN: SUBORDINATE MASCULINITIES IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN DRAMA Grant Williams, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2013 In the past half century, masculinity has been consistently seen as in crisis, undergoing a diminishment of its authority. At the same time, however, the overall power structure, one that consistently favors white men, has only changed in seemingly minor ways. There exists, then, a disparity between representations of masculinity in popular culture and the way in which authority is maintained. This study focuses on the connection between representations of masculinity in the larger culture and how these ideas influence the reception of five important canonical Broadway productions. Employing R.W. Connell’s concept of subordinate masculinities, these plays and the struggle of subordinate white male types they stage are analyzed to understand the ways in which they reify a masculine hegemony. The study begins in the anxious economic postwar world with Arthur Miller’s 1949 Death of a Salesman before moving into the culture of affluence as demonstrated with Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Analyzing the tumultuous decades of the ‘60s and ‘70s is David Rabe’s The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel, which although it centers around Vietnam, speaks volumes about an ever-growing isolation and narcissism pervading masculine representations. David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross and the Dustin Hoffman-led revival of Salesman take Reaganism to task before a final twentieth century revival of Salesman shifts to a growing introspection among American men. The final chapter looks to Tracy Letts’s August: Osage County a play that has decentered the male into obsolescence and what that says about the status of men in the 21st century. By examining popular culture, assessing how masculinity was portrayed in film, the iv popular fiction, music, the presidents, those iconic individuals that left a mark on society, this study contextualizes how certain time periods have portrayed men and how theatrical representations reflect or quarrel with those images. The final assessment of masculinity questions whether masculinity is simply founded on the notion of crisis, and suggests that instability is at the core of the identity of white American males. Ultimately this study takes steps to analyze major male characters of American drama as gender-constructed individuals. v TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION: “HERE WE GO ROUND THE PRICKLY PEAR…” .. 1 II. DEATH OF A SALESMAN & THE AMERICAN MALE IN POSTWAR AMERICA ................................................................................................................................... 32 III. CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF & A PROFUSION OF TYPES ................................. 79 IV. FAILINGS OF AMERICAN MASCULINITY ..................................................... 129 V. ANGST TO DESPONDENCE: MASCULINITY IN THE ‘80S AND ‘90S ....... 170 VI. THE HOLLOW AMERICAN ........................................................................ 208 VII. CONCLUSION: “THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS…” ...................... 236 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 239 vi PREFACE I would like to thank my colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh past and present for providing me encouragement, competition, solace, and friendship throughout all of my graduate career and through the writing of this study. Bill Daw at Special Collections at the University of Pittsburgh consistently provided wonderful assistance with archival material. I would also like to thank my faculty members who saw me develop throughout my time at Pitt to reach the point I am at today. Dr. Kathleen George deserves my extra gratitude for her care, attention, and interest in supervising the dissertation. I always felt a great deal of support and encouragement that enabled me to be creative, explore my topic, and write the dissertation that was truly mine. Thank you, Kathy. Thank you also to the staff in the Theatre Arts department for their support and assistance throughout my time at Pitt. Lastly, none of this would have been possible without the support, love, and encouragement from my wife. Thank you Courtney, for being my calm, my steady, and the foundation that makes the thing I do possible. There are also two little kids who are very proud of their daddy and who can’t wait to spend a little more time with him. I dedicate the hard work I put into this to them. vii I. INTRODUCTION: “HERE WE GO ROUND THE PRICKLY PEAR…” “men do not constitute a homogeneous, internally coherent bloc. Particular masculinities are themselves subordinated by the hegemonic practice.” Demetrakis Demetriou In Tracy Letts’ award-winning play, August: Osage County, the character of Barbara, after sharing with her sisters one of her last conversations with their recently deceased father, attempts to summarize his feelings at the close of his life. She states, …there was something sad in his voice—or no, not sad, he always sounded sad— something more hopeless than that. As if it had already happened. As if whatever was disappearing had already disappeared. As if it was too late. As if it was already over. And no one saw it go. This country, this experiment, America, this hubris: what a lament, if no one saw it go. Here today, gone tomorrow. Dissipation is actually much worse than cataclysm (123-24). Containing a weary sadness and resignation, the play never reveals just what that “it” is for Beverly Weston. Is it his life, his manhood, the state of his family, the country? The lack of a definitive answer, however, allows one to develop her/his own ideas behind Beverly’s frustration and the play itself. An easy answer concerning Beverly’s angst might simply be his wife, Violet, and the rather sour life they led together. However, there is something deeper than this occurring, and it is Barbara’s speech above that lends the most credibility to that idea. The lines, to a certain extent, recall Tony Kushner’s fixation and frustration with America, while also closing with 1 echoes of Neil Young’s famous sentiment, “It’s better to burn out than it is to rust.” There is even a closer and more appropriate referent, the closing line of T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men”— “This is the way the world ends/ Not with a bang but a whimper”—a poem that is important, both thematically and structurally, to August: Osage County. Beverly twice quotes the poem in the Prologue (“Life is very long” and “Here we go round the prickly pear…”) and Johnna quotes the ending of the poem while holding Violet in the final moment of the play (“This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends…”) What is significant is that Johnna does not deliver the final line of the poem, effectively ending the play with a whimper instead of a bang. The connection between the play and the poem identifies a key theme behind much of August: Osage County, a theme that is central to this study: the diminishment of the American man. T.S. Eliot opens his poem with the following line, “We are the hollow men/ We are the stuffed men,” and digs deeper in the next stanza describing the characteristics of this breed of men: “Shape without form, shade without colour,/ Paralysed force, gesture without motion.” With this poem in mind, one cannot help but link an understanding of Beverly Weston—or any male figure in the play—to Eliot’s bleak imagery. The question behind this connection between the work of Eliot and Letts is, why are these men hollow?1 What is the “it” that is disappearing that is making these men hollow? Are the souls of man or the soul of America really fading? Or, instead, has anything really disappeared at all? As one traces American drama back over the past half century, however, these same questions seem applicable to other dramas. In fact, there are numerous examples of “hollow men” and their struggle for meaning and expression in this country. Suddenly Letts’ drama 1 The reasons behind Eliot’s naming of these men has been effectively argued elsewhere, but will not be produced here. Instead, I will just be using the term hollow men as a way to describe the state of men in the latter half of the twentieth century to today. 2 appears to be just another link in an American dramatic tradition of portraying near-powerless, often immobilized masculine figures.2 While there is no lack of theory and criticism analyzing the major male figures of American drama, very few examine them as emasculated, hollow men, “shape without form, shade without colour.” I begin this study, then, remembering and honoring